Cathy Newman checks it out
Labour’s not the only party with dossiers rolling off the printing presses. The Tories launched a big poster campaign this week with a supporting factfile on “Gordon Brown’s Record”. Needless to say, as soon as the document arrived at FactCheck HQ, the team got to work on it.
The claim
“Labour’s early release scheme has led to 1,500 crimes being committed by people who should have been behind bars at the time (Ministry of Justice, End of Custody Licence Releases and Recalls, 26 February 2010, table 3).
Ministry of Justice figures show that these include 81 burglaries, 25 robberies, and seven alleged sex offences (Hansard, 29 April 2009, Col. 1333w).”
“Gordon Brown’s Record”, a Conservative dossier supporting their poster campaign, 29 March, 2010
The background
On 19 June 2007 the then Justice Secretary, Lord Falconer, made a statement in the House of Lords about the prison population.
It included a temporary measure of allowing certain offenders who had been given a determinate sentence of four years or less to be released on licence up to eighteen days early.
Those convicted of serious sexual or violent crimes were ineligible. An offender on licence would remain subject to their sentence and liable for recall to prison.
Jack Straw, the new Justice Secretary, announced in February that the scheme would be discontinued on 12 March 2010.
The analysis
According to the Ministry of Justice figures, a total of 1,580 “alleged further offences” were committed by offenders between 29 June 2007 and 31 January 2010, as is made clear in the Ministry of Justice statistics cited by the Conservatives (see table 3).
So the Conservatives figure of 1,500 seems reasonable at first but, on closer inspection, it’s clear they omit the word “alleged”.
Andrew Neilson, assistant director of the Howard League for Penal Reform told FactCheck:
“We worry that the run up to the election will see the public misled about the amount of crime in their area. For example, there is a huge difference between an alleged offence and a proven one and we must not blur the two.
“Politicians need to stop point scoring on the issue of crime and punishment and worrying people unnecessarily,” he added. “Crime has always been a hot political issue but politicians must not massage the facts for their own gain. The more genuinely informed we are, the better decisions we can make.”
When we put it to the Tory party that they were being misleading by removing “alleged” from their document, a spokesman told us:
“While it is true that using alleged re-offending could conceivably overstate re-offending (by including people who did not actually offend), proven re-offending would certainly understate it (even before you take into account the beyond reasonable doubt threshold) – proven re-offending would capture only a fraction of actual re-offending.”
But, despite our best efforts, neither the Conservatives nor the Ministry of Justice could provide FactCheck with clear-up rates, so we don’t know what proportion of these alleged further offences were actually committed by the individuals concerned.
So could we get further clarity on the specific offences? In a written answer on 29 April 2009, Justice Secretary Jack Straw proved a table showing alleged offences showing 81 burglaries, 25 robberies and seven sex offences, the same figures that the Conservatives cite.
But their document states: “Ministry of Justice figures show that these include 81 burglaries, 25 robberies, and seven alleged sex offences”, giving an impression that only the sex offences were alleged, when Straw’s written answer makes clear that the burglaries and robberies were alleged as well.
Of the seven alleged sexual offences listed in the table, one resulted in a conviction and the remaining six cases were either discontinued prior to trial or resulted in acquittal. So it would have been more accurate if the Tory claim had included one sexual offence.
The claim
“I increased the gap between rich and poor,” next to a picture of Gordon Brown
Conservative party poster, 28 March 2010
The analysis
Two parts to this claim – has the gap increased, and how much did Gordon Brown – chancellor for a decade, PM for nearly three years – have to do with it?
“It’s fair to say incomes have increased for most people, they’ve increased most at the top, and growth has been fairly meagre at the bottom,” is how Luke Sibieta, a senior research economist at respected independent number-crunchers Institute for Fiscal Studies, describes the equality picture under Labour. (A much more detailed IFS explanation is here )
This broadly backs up the Tories’ claim of a widening gap – caused largely by the very richest getting richer more quickly than everyone else.
So how much of that increase in inequality is down to Brown?
It’s worth noting that rising inequality is a problem that pre-dates Labour. The graph below shows the most commonly used measure of inequality, which takes into account incomes across the whole population.
Source: Institute for Fiscal Studies – The Gini coefficient, 1979 to 2007-08 (GB)
If you cropped the graph to start when Labour came to power, there would still be an overall rise (albeit with downs and ups along the way).
But this is looks like a pretty puny foothill next to the comparatively Himalayan increase which took place under Thatcher during the eighties.
One thing we do know is that Labour’s tax and benefit changes have been redistributive (think Robin Hood in action). Look at the graph on page 11 of this pdf from The Institute for Fiscal Studies, which assesses the winners and losers from Labour’s reforms.
It’s a fairly steady slope with the poorest ending better off, and the rich ending up worse off, than they would have done if Labour had stuck with the status quo it inherited.
Whether they’ve done enough is a matter of debate.
* Footnote – the most recent figures we have on this date back to 2007-8; new ones are due out in the next month or two.
Cathy Newman’s verdict
On the wealth gap, the Tories are right – but that gap becomes a gulf if you look at the party’s record during the ‘loadsamoney’ eighties.
On prisoner release, the Conservatives are on much shakier ground. What happened to innocent until proven guilty?
It looks like the Tories have misrepresented the Ministry of Justice figures. The party’s simply not justified in giving the impression that these alleged offences have all definitely been committed.
And where the Tories did have accurate figures – on sexual offences – they chose to use the larger, alleged, number.
